It hasn’t rained in for-freaking-ever here in Minnesota. As in, every piece of vegetation around these parts not tended to on the daily is brown, crunchy, dead, or all of the above. As in, we are almost 8 inches shy of normal precipitation this year already. And we were way off the year before that. 2007 was only our first summer here, but that one was extremely dry as well. And never mind all the talk about snowy Minnesota. We’ve suffered through 2 winters so far without a decent snowfall. I didn’t even know it was possible to have a dry winter.
When I woke up this morning to take the dog for our walk, I was baffled when upon opening the garage door, I saw that it was pouring rain outside. It literally took me a moment to figure out what was going on, and how I should deal with it. My inner dialogue went something like this:
Me: “What is this wet stuff?”
Me2: “You remember that – its rain, stupid.”
Me: “Rain, eh? Can we still walk in it?”
Me2: “Not unless you want the entire house to smell like wet dog when you get home from work”
Me: “I’m confused now. I don’t know what to do!”
Or something like that, anyway. I didn’t have a stenographer, and it was early. Of course, that rain lasted all of about 2 hours, then the sun came out, diligent as ever, evaporating the bone Mother Nature threw us.
Fast forward to this afternoon, riding home on the bus. The closer we got to the Northwestern ‘burbs, the blacker the sky. By the time I got in my car at the Park N’ Ride, I had three severe weather & tornado warnings on my phone, the wind had picked up so much it stole my sunglasses off the seat of the car as I was driving. By the time I got home, the rain had started – a straight deluge, followed by more insane, tree-ripping-out-of-the-ground wind and some light hail. Yessiree, you have to hand it to the Midwest, it does weather a bit on the crazy side. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, it can’t ever do something on a small scale. It’s either all or nothing.
Side note: Wow, I bitch a lot about the weather. San Diego is becoming more affordable every day, and is looking better and better every day. I don’t think even I could bitch about 70 and sunny 7 days a week. Meh, I bet I could.
Frustrating Update: it appears as if my blog is angry at me for long neglecting it for the fast-living, crazy world of Twitter (feel free to follow me!) and Facebook, and the video above isn’t working in some browsers. You can see it over here at YouTube if you’re so inclined to do such things.
